ABSTRACT
“No other creative act is as long and difficult, since no form of expression (words, sounds, colours and hewn forms) is as rebellious as the architectural one, consisting of functional, static, constructive and economic conditions and requirements.” Pier Luigi Nervi (Kepes 1967)
Today, full-scale projects take a central role in the focus area of craft in the architectural education at the University of Liechtenstein. In series of design studios, summer schools as part of Erasmus-Intensive Programmes or workshops integrated in Erasmus+ projects, various approaches and different methods are followed during a long-lasting practise. In close collaboration with international partner universities, supported by local building companies, regional stakeholders and often funded by EU grants and regional communities, workshops are usually at the centre of the full-scale projects. In a concentrated period of a few days, the initial idea was always to start a creative process with one material at hand. With a stack of wooden lattices, a pallet of bricks or a heap of clay at hand, mixed groups of students start to play around, experiment with compositions and create prototypes in assembling single elements to a whole structure. Out of such short and intensive workshops, complex projects were developed in a process which sometimes lasted up to one year until the building was finished, with sometimes more than 100 collaborating actors.
The production process of these full-scale projects carried out at the University in the field of Craft can be divided into five methods. Identical to all five methods is that they take a material as the origin of the full-scale activity and that the topic of making and collaborating is understood as an essential part of teaching construction. The constant integration of constructive aspects into the design process shapes the behaviour of the architecture students and, in the sense of Luigi Nervi, prepares them practically for the complex professional field of architects.
